


Shaped by Diverse Souls

by Lassarina



Category: Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy Record Keeper, Final Fantasy X
Genre: Gen, Summons & Summoning Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7925539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/pseuds/Lassarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reunited by the magic of the library, Yuna and Braska discuss the ways their summons differ, and the ways they are the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shaped by Diverse Souls

**Author's Note:**

> Written for genprompt_bingo, for the prompt "magical creatures."

Yuna thought she would never get used to the horrific sounds that fiends made in this world when they died. In Spira, the collapse of a form into pyreflies had a dignified grace, a sense of rightness as the soul trapped inside was freed.

As the Chocobo Eater collapsed, a rift opened up in the strange painted background of the Calm Lands, a glittering thing of all the colors of the elements. Yuna held her breath, waiting to see who would step out. She remembered her own crossing to this world, stepping through a curtain of pyreflies so dense she felt she couldn't breathe, and emerging into the flat canvas that looked like Spira but wasn't.

As the robed figure straightened and she saw her father's familiar face, someone gave a choked sob. Yuna realized belatedly that _she_ had sobbed, that her hands were pressed to her mouth to hold the sound in as Father looked around, blinking in the bright false sunlight. Lulu's hand rested warm and comforting on her shoulder for a moment before Yuna stumbled forward, reaching out.

"Yuna?" her father whispered, holding out his arms to her.

She ran into them like a little girl, and held on tight.

~*~

The sound of her own boot heels on the floor of the library was too loud. Yuna walked past the hallways that led to other worlds, searching for her father. She found him with Rydia in the corridor with paintings of a moon. That corridor had always seemed so strange to her--how could one walk on the moon?--but Rydia said they had ridden a ship built like a whale. Yuna might have thought Rydia was mocking her, except that Rydia had not a shred of deceit.

Rydia was gesturing to a painting depicting the Lair of the Father, as she called it, and as Yuna approached she heard Rydia explaining in her softly lilting voice that eidolons, as she called her aeons, would answer her call only when she had defeated them in battle. Father leaned in to study the painted scales, and then turned his head as Yuna approached.

Would she ever become accustomed to seeing her father's smile of greeting in the present, not only a memory? She hoped not. She wanted to keep the thrill of joy forever. She made the gesture of prayer to Rydia as the other summoner turned to face her. Rydia smiled and beckoned for Yuna to join them.

"I was just asking Lady Rydia about aeons in her world," Father said.

"My eidolons have much in common with your aeons, but not always the same form," Rydia said.

"Yours more often coincide with others." Yuna thought of the summons the others had discussed, of the forms trapped in crystals that she could carry into paintings with her. Her own aeons were far away and hard to call, but sometimes when she touched the crystalline orb that held Valefor's spirit, she felt the beating of wings against her hand like a frantic dove, and the warmth of her first and (she would admit it here, when her aeons could not hear her thoughts) her favorite summon.

"No two summoners call the same aeon even in Spira," Father said thoughtfully. "The shapes are similar, but always just a little bit different, and of course we all call our aeons by names of our own. The aeon of Bevelle is Bahamut for you, and Tiamat for me."

For a moment Yuna wondered how he knew, but Rydia had been speaking of her Bahamut--perhaps that's how. She stepped close to the painting, studying the intricate detail of this Bahamut's scales, his massive leathery wings, the much more explicit draconian shape. She wondered what his fayth would look like, if even he had one. In Rydia's world, eidolons seemed to exist on their own, not called into being and supported by fayth and faith and desperate summoners. "Which one is true?" she wondered aloud.

"All of them. None of them." Rydia shrugged, sending graceful ripples through her green robes. "Isn't it more accurate to say that we call what we expect?"

"But you were raised by aeons," Yuna protested. "I mean, eidolons." Even their names for the forces who aided them were different. Terra called them Espers, and looked sad when she gazes at the crystal that held a spirit called Maduin.

Rydia smiled a small, secret smile. "And when Asura plucked me from the tidal pool at the edge of the Feymarch, she wore a mother's face; it was only later I saw her terrible beauty." Yuna marked the wistfulness in her voice and felt a pang of jealousy. She had never known her mother, and Rydia had two.

"Lady Rydia," Father asked, "what happens to a summoner who cannot overcome the eidolon she wishes to summon?"

"She dies." Rydia's tone was cool and brisk. "Eidolons respect strength and give no quarter. A summoner must know not to call up what she cannot put down." Her eyes went sad and distant for a moment, as though remembering. "Once defeated, an eidolon has no choice save to serve, whatever the summoner would command of him. But the strength to defeat an eidolon is not merely strength of spell and sword; it must come from within. This is not to say that there has never been a summoner who used her power poorly; in the annals of my village were several cautionary tales of summoners who reached too high." She considered the painted Bahamut again. "No one had been able to call Leviathan or Bahamut in centuries. And I am the last of my line."

Father bowed his head in acknowledgment. "Our aeons, too, test the strength within," he said, stepping gently around Rydia's sadness. "Your way is not so different from ours, I think."

In the paintings, they did not fall. They could be sapped of strength, yes, and require time to recover before venturing forth again, but something in the magic of this library kept them from dying when they challenged something too great for their skill.

Yuna found herself wondering if that was to the good.

"Please excuse me," Rydia said, giving them both a slight bow. She withdrew, and Yuna watched her go to join Rosa, who knelt in prayer beneath the soaring stained-glass cupola of the library. In Spira, such a thing would never be built, for fear of Sin's destruction. There were so many strange and beautiful things in this world.

"Where are the paintings of your story?" Father asked.

Yuna led the way to the corridor that documented her journey. In silence, they walked along it, studying the restored paintings. Yuna paused before the painting of the Via Purifico, and tears stung her eyes. Standing next to her father, she was ashamed to have him see her in such a place, even if only in canvas and oil. "Are you all right, Yuna?" Father asked.

"I was just thinking of aeons," she said.

"I never wanted you to become a summoner," he said, studying the painting as though it held the answers. "It is not that I thought you couldn't. Even as a child, you did whatever you determined to do. But I would have spared you this. Perhaps a disgraced summoner should not have aspired to save the world for you….but I tried. I am sorry, Yuna."

"But you succeeded," Yuna said, astonished that her father would apologize to her. "You defeated Sin."

"Not forever."

Her throat felt hot and tight. She reached out and took his hand, and drew him further down the corridor, stopping before the painting of Yunalesca in the Zanarkand Dome. Looking at the image of their battle, her father's face went pale.

"You fought her," he said, and she didn't know if he was proud or horrified.

"It was the only way," she said. "I could not— _would_ not—condemn one of my guardians to become Sin."

Her father bowed his head. "I didn't know," he said. "She never told us." He glanced back over his shoulder, to the lobby that led to the dormitories. Somewhere in this library, Sir Jecht and Sir Auron waited for their summoner to return.

"Why would she?" Yuna murmured. "Trapped for a thousand years in Zanarkand….hate was all that she had left." Her father would never have knowingly condemned one of his guardians to a half-life as Sin. Not for the first time, Yuna wondered what good—or ill—Lady Yunalesca had seen in her, to tell her the truth of the Final Summoning.

For comfort, she slid a hand into the pocket sewn into her sleeve, and grasped the crystal that held Valefor. The impression of wings brushed her hand, and made it easier to breathe.

"Have you had a chance to see Ixion again?" Yuna asked, and from the smile that touched her father's face, she knew the impulse had been right.

"You call him Ixion, too," he said, and there was a hint of wonder in it.

Yuna smiled back. "Come, we keep the crystals in the main hall." Hand in hand with her father, she walked toward a reunion with a fayth that she would never have dreamed possible.


End file.
